


Snapshots

by badass_normal



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-14
Updated: 2010-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-11 01:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badass_normal/pseuds/badass_normal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>10 drabbles, 10 women, 100 words each.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snapshots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ozmissage](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ozmissage).



1.

The boar squeals and falls. The gun slips from her lifeless fingers. She pictures a human being thunking to the ground instead.

"Nice shot," dryly, slowly. Isabel's eyes blank and frigid.

Juliet doesn't protest that the violence makes her nauseous. Standing up for herself is what will be taught last.

\--

"You're starting to remind me of her," Amelia cautions. "You never used to shut yourself off like this."

"Isabel?" Juliet says flatly. "She was told to get me adjusted. It's working."

Amelia ignores her. "If you're not careful, you'll become that mask."

Icy, apathetic, ruthless. Sounds about right. "What mask?"

 

2.

They don't have sex. In fact, he has no interest in getting anything out of this. He brings her off, worships her with his tongue, and she kisses him later, grips his biceps, smiles at the contrast of her pale hands on his dark arms.

She has done this all before and knows how dirty it will feel in the end, when the afterglow has faded. His lips will be on her skin for weeks, his touch remaining until the guilt absorbs it, like it absorbs everything else.

_Guilt_. One of the first English words she made sure to learn.

 

3.

She's not going to cry in front of a fucking ten-year-old. At least that's the plan.

But when she kneels down next to the damn dog tears press behind her eyes anyway, because crying and freaking out are the only things she's managed to do since Boone's death. Since the crash. Since Sabrina cut her off. It's been a long fucking time.

The kid watches and he's not judging her for puffy eyes and snot clogging her nostrils. He hasn't gotten the memo that she's useless even for dog-watching.

Or maybe he's giving her a chance to start something new.

 

4.

It's the first time a gun's been pointed at her, and she almost vomits at how casually Ana Lucia swings her arm and delivers her orders. There's a rabid glint in her eye, the gun the only thing that matters now.

Something in Libby aches at the betrayal, the part of her that isn't still in shock. The woman she's trusted with her life for forty-eight days, even if she was never naïve enough to consider her a friend, could kill her in a second.

She masquerades as a psychologist, but she's just now learned what people are capable of.

 

5.

Jack's pissed at Kate, so he brings Ana Lucia tequila and drags her onto the A-team and uses her like a neon badge of _I don't need you._

Before that, his hips bruise her own on the jungle floor, his thumbs pressing against the bullet scars, his chest crushing her breasts. She gasps against his skin as branches tear into hers, savors seconds of contact like it's the last time she'll fuck somebody. (It isn't. For the record. )

After this, he kisses the scratches on her back apologetically and she wonders how giving up's become what she does best.

 

6.

She would be screaming, sobbing for her life if her vocal chords weren't paralyzed.

Her tear ducts are frozen and she can't even cry.

(_Once upon a time she would have had a brief crisis of conscience over poisoning an old man who loved her. She still would have done it, but her hands might have shaken, the diamonds possibly slipping through her fingers. Literally, not figuratively. There are a million excuses and no reasons she's not that person anymore. _

She had no right.

Hindsight is twenty-twenty. They say.)

Acceptance smothers her, thick as the dirt thrown into her eyes.

 

7.

"Oy, Ginger."

She rolls her eyes at the familiar appellation. "Can I help you?"

Naomi's hands are on her hips, white beater showing off wiry muscles. She's a butch little thing with a noisy bark, and Charlotte has hated her for days.

"If something happens to me, it's up to you to look after the others."

"Excuse me?"

"You're totally untrained, but you seem most capable of the lot." Naomi leans forward on the railing, gazes over the ocean. "And you're a woman."

"So?"

"Means I can trust you, yeah?"

Charlotte smiles to herself. "It doesn't mean anything at all."

 

8.

Benjamin Linus sobs pathetically, and she remembers that this is not Jacob's way. That it would be an insult to his memory to avenge his death with murder.

She does not accept Ben because she pities him, or because she feels any sympathy. She accepts him because it is her job to repress the thirst for vengeance that would cripple any other mortal. Animalistic rage throbs red and powerful in front of her eyes, but she has been trained well and blinks it away.

She will not allow hatred for his killer to eclipse the love she had for Jacob.

 

9.

Every brush stroke starts a shudder beginning from her scalp and ending at the top of her spinal cord.

Mum is patient, too patient to just slice off the broken, disgusting mane that has had years to collect dirt and bugs and trauma. She is gentle but it hurts and Claire cries like a small child as clumps of hair inevitably snap at the roots.

It takes hours, and everything is still gross when it's done.

"Thank you," Claire whimpers softly, tears in her voice.

"I love you," Mum answers, kissing her on top of the head, filth and all.

 

10.

She finally, finally goes to jail.

At the conclusion of her sentence, she realizes that the prisons have been there since she detonated Wayne's house. They've been toy airplanes and dying mothers, they've been Ed Mars, they've been Jack Shephard and Aaron Littleton and Cassidy and Clementine Phillips and James Ford. (No, that's wrong: "James" is a man she knows through visitations and through his daughter and he has next to nothing to do with Kate.)

She finally, finally figures out as she's released that cages just take some getting used to, and that, now, even she deserves a home.


End file.
